Day three, same story.
No Jasmine, new furniture. The noxious smell of fresh bleach.
A full cast had been put over my arm, stretching all the way to my fingertips. Katarina had a grapefruit sized welt on her head.
We sat in silence, her weeping quietly, me running the numbers.
50/50.
If I were in the outside looking in, how much would I bet they took her next? Took me next? It was the proverbial, albeit rare, straight up coinflip.
The purest gamble.
Her. 12 grand, she goes next. The poker player’s mantra - “fuck it, double up or go home.”
They dragged her away not long after. She didn’t bother resisting or calling for help.
I’m not a good man.
“Winner, winner, chicken dinner” I cackled to the empty room, thinking how many times I’d heard that stupid joke as some donkey won a pot they didn’t deserve.
When they brought Katarina back, I was already in a corner, incoherently betting with myself. What fucked up power she would have? What part of her body would be different? How would she change in the night?
I mostly babbled on about whether I’d live to see tomorrow.
So far, I was 2 for 2.
Once, twice, three times a lady.
Looking at Katarina, nothing immediately jumped out at me. The only perceivable difference was her mouth. It looked…swollen. A batter beaned in the mouth by a wild pitch.
She stomped over to me, full of verve and swagger. I noticed her track marks were gone.
She knelt, her face inches from mine, and never stopped talking.
I mean, never. Not a breath between diatribes. Louder and louder.
Not rudely, nothing aggressive or threatening. Just unabashedly engaged, energetic, spilling out stories and ideas and theories. All of them rife with delusional hope.
A bright ball of demented sunshine.
It was like someone fed Billy Mays six eight-balls and asked him his thoughts on the informercial market. Feral, but mostly innocent.
I couldn’t hear any of it. Not really. I was too transfixed in terror.
Katarina’s teeth were gone, replaced by four rows of ferocious incisors, all elongated and askew. Stalactites on top, stalagmites on bottom. An cave of fangs.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Fucking creature feature.
Eventually I slunk away to bed, holding my breath as I crept, wincing with each step.
Katarina was still in the corner, manically staring at an empty wall and proselytizing at the top of her lungs.
I tried to stay awake but inevitably passed out, wishing I had lost the coin flip.
A wail from Hell sent me running for cover.
Katarina began screaming some new bullshit word at an impossible decibel level. My ears pounded, eardrums threatening to rupture.
I finally summoned the little courage I ever had in this rotten world and looked at her.
Katarina was on all fours, screaming repetitiously at an empty chair.
Except Katarina wasn’t Katarina.
There is no animal to strictly compare her to, but she looked like a bear crossed with a wolf and, just for effect, throw in some fucking buffalo.
Her torso was enormous and muscular, covered in a thick, deep brown shag. Somehow the nearly thousand pounds she must’ve weighed were supported by canine-like spindly legs that ended in paws. Each paw was festooned with probably thirty some-odd individual claws.
The head looked like a yak, except six horns sprouted from her forehead. At least twenty rows of fangs apiece, top and bottom, gnashed with each incoherent, booming word she bellowed.
I can’t bluff here. I pissed myself.
Katarina, if Katarina was even in there anymore, just kept roaring louder and louder. The room began shaking as if she’d summoned an earthquake.
I trembled and stared with holy dread.
Her voice kept finding new heights. The walls began to buckle and crack. Drywall dust sprayed everywhere.
The beast that was Katarina started bucking, kicking its legs back like a horse before slamming its massive horns into the walls, the chairs, the tables.
One seriously fucked up rodeo.
I heard myself sobbing, felt the warmth of fresh urine cascading down my legs. My collective injuries shot pain through my nerves with every reverberation.
The pain in my ears was unbearable. A quick touch revealed they oozing blood.
The Katarina creature eventually saw me and bellowed whatever word belonged to her at me. She…it began to slowly creep my way, horns in line with my throat. The room shook with every step.
“FUCKING GORE ME ALREADY!”
I cried for death.
My eardrums finally burst in an explosion of pain.
I fell to the floor, the world silent as a snow laden wintery morning, and felt pure terror as the beast slowly drew near. It was swishing its massive head dramatically, biting the very air with its endless teeth.
There was only agony, only horror, only silence.
That’s all we were going to find in Clinical Trial 87.
I felt the Earth split with each stalking step.
An old proverb came to mind.
“Hoping to recoup is what ruins the gambler.”
I was spellbound, watching my ruination approaching.
I startled as the beast suddenly fell over with a crash and began spasming, convulsing and slamming its body with impossible force. I became airborne and slammed into the ground, again and again, feeling every wound rip anew.
This unholy brute had made a sick trampoline of the world.
I watched its hair dissipate, the skull morph, every bit of it disappearing before my eyes.
All that was left was a tiny, frail, naked girl, trashing and bleeding on the broken tiles.
The door flew open.
The team poured through and began caring for me, naturally ignoring the dying Katarina.
Opium spilled into my veins and my eyes rolled with pleasure as the overwhelming pain dulled. The world itself became a distant, lackadaisical suggestion.
Katarina slammed herself over and over, wriggling about like a fish caught on a line, until she was facing me. The track marks had returned to her arms.
She looked like her, except where a mouth should be was simply… nothing.
No lips, no teeth, no skin – a gaping hole in her face where her mouth belonged, a black, empty thing. Like the middle of her face had been stomped away.
She looked like something out of a bad zombie film, flaps of flesh hanging where a mouth should be.
What a bad beat, I thought, chuckling to myself, driven wretched and mad by the sheer insanity of it all.
I thought of Sunday School as a kid, stupid but safe, before I’d started down that lost highway.
“Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.”
Babble, torment, and judgment.
That’s all we would find in Clinical Trial 87.
My turn was next.
At least I’d be spared hearing whatever the word was.
Hurray for the sound of fucking silence.
Katarina and I locked eyes, hers filled with that same animalism, as a mouth that wasn’t there tried to open and shut, a grotesque caricature of chewing.
I heard nothing. Thank whoever.
Until I was cheated.
I don’t know how, I don’t fucking know how, but a single word screamed inside my mind, one I’d never forget:
“BAALRYNYANTEERAQ”
The last thing I saw before sleep claimed me was the light slip out of Katarina’s eyes forever.